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Bespoke Financial Model Creation
Aston Finch builds bespoke forward-looking financial models for owner-managed businesses. They show what a decision about hiring, growth, investment, pricing or funding does to profit, to cash and to the balance sheet, tested before the commitment is made.
Scoped to your requirements, with a tailored quote.
| Period | Y1 | Y2 | Y3 | Y4 | Y5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | £1,850k | £2,280k | £2,760k | £3,180k | £3,460k |
| EBIT | £210k | £330k | £470k | £590k | £690k |
One illustration of a point worth testing: a plan can be profitable and still need cash before it returns any. Below the line, cash is going out. Above it, coming back.
| Period | Y1 | Y2 | Y3 | Y4 | Y5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash movement | (£320k) | (£180k) | (£40k) | £150k | £310k |
| Measure | Base | Downside | Upside |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue, Y3 | £2,760k | £2,290k | £3,140k |
| EBIT, Y3 | £470k | £210k | £660k |
| Cash low point | (£340k) | (£610k) | (£180k) |
Illustrative figures for a hypothetical business. Not a forecast, and not client results.
The problem
Historic accounts are a record, and a good one. What they cannot do is tell you what a second site, two new engineers, a price change or a growth plan does to cash over the next twelve to thirty-six months. That is a different question, and it needs a forward view rather than a backward one.
So the decision gets made another way: on judgement, on a spreadsheet built in a hurry and patched since, or on the assumption that profit and cash move together. They frequently do not, and the month they diverge is rarely visible in an annual figure.
The question is seldom whether the business is performing. It is whether it can absorb what you are about to ask of it, and when.
When it helps
The trigger is usually a commitment that is difficult to reverse, approaching faster than the information required to judge it.
Payroll starts in full long before a new hire is fully productive. The useful question is how much cash that gap consumes, and in which month it closes.
A deposit, fit-out, a period of running two cost bases at once, and a ramp that is slower than the plan assumes. All of it worth seeing before the lease is signed.
Growth consumes cash before it produces any. Debtors, stock and payroll move first, and the low point tends to arrive earlier than expected.
How much headroom the plan genuinely needs, what the funding mechanics do to it, and what remains if revenue lands below expectation.
The question
If one of these is the question in front of you, it is the starting point for the conversation. The model is then specified around it rather than the other way round.
These are the questions owners arrive with. None of them can be answered from historic accounts alone, which is the gap this engagement exists to close.
What we build
The mechanics below are the evidence of capability rather than the reason to commission the work. Which of them a model needs depends entirely on the decision it has to answer.
Monthly profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet, linked to one another rather than maintained as three separate documents that quietly disagree.
Helps answerWhat does the plan do to profit, to cash and to the financial position as a whole?
Volumes, pricing, gross margin, payroll, headcount, overheads and payment terms, set as inputs you control rather than as figures typed inside formulas.
Helps answerWhich assumptions actually determine the result?
Base, upside, downside and specific decision cases, with assumptions changed consistently across the whole model rather than in one corner of it.
Helps answerHow sensitive is the outcome if reality differs from the plan?
Debtor days, creditor terms, stock, work in progress and VAT timing, where they are relevant and supported by your figures or your accountant’s.
Helps answerWhen does profitable growth start to consume cash?
Start dates, salaries, employer costs, recruitment and equipment, and a realistic productivity ramp for the roles the decision actually involves.
Helps answerAt what point does a hire become financially supportable?
Capital expenditure, depreciation, drawdown, repayment and interest, where the investment and how it is paid for form part of the question.
Helps answerWhat does the investment do to cash headroom over time?
The revenue, margin, utilisation or volume thresholds required before the additional cost base carries itself.
Helps answerWhat has to be true for this decision to work?
A short set of outputs on one page: cash low point, headroom, break-even, EBITDA and a comparison of the cases side by side.
Helps answerWhat should management watch once the decision is made?
No model contains all of this, and you should be sceptical of anyone who suggests otherwise. Scope follows the decision. A hiring question may need headcount, a revenue ramp and cash, and nothing further. A premises move may need capex, funding, working capital and a fully linked forecast. We agree which parts are genuinely required, and which are not, before any work begins.
01 Business assumptions
Volumes, pricing, margin, headcount, overheads, payment terms and capital plans. Set as inputs you control, and separated from the calculations that use them.
02 The model
One linked set of mechanics. Change an assumption once and it carries through every statement consistently, rather than being re-entered in three places.
03 Outputs
04 The decision
What the plan requires, where it gets tight, what has to be true for it to work, and how much of that you are comfortable committing to.
In practice
Four illustrative engagements, each following the same sequence: the situation, what gets modelled, and what the owner can then see.
These are illustrations of the kind of decision support the engagement provides. They are not case studies, not client results, and not outcomes we undertake to reproduce.
Risk visibility
The value is not a number at the end. It is that the things a decision rests on stop being assumptions held in somebody’s head and become explicit enough to argue with.
Management can see what the plan actually depends on, rather than relying on a broad and largely unexamined sense of it.
An annual profit figure conceals the month in which cash is lowest, and the months in which cost arrives before revenue does.
Different hiring, investment, pricing or funding cases can be tested against one another on a single consistent basis.
The volume, margin, utilisation or timing required to support a decision can be stated as a number rather than estimated.
A weaker case can be examined openly while the business is still free to act, rather than after it is committed to the cost base.
Owners, managers, lenders and advisers can discuss the same assumptions and the same outputs instead of three different spreadsheets.
One model, three cases. The measure below is the lowest cash position reached, where a deeper figure means less headroom.
Revenue 15 per cent below plan, and customers paying 15 days later
The low point deepens and arrives two months earlier
(£610k)
The plan as management currently expects it
Break-even reached in month eleven
(£340k)
Volumes ahead of plan with margin held
The funding requirement is largely avoided
(£180k)
Illustrative figures for a hypothetical business. Not a forecast, and not client results.
None of this removes uncertainty, and we will not suggest that it does. A model cannot tell you what will happen. What it can do is show you what the plan depends on, where it becomes tight, and how much of that you are willing to commit to. That is risk made visible, not risk removed.
The sequence
Four stages, and deliberately collaborative, because a model nobody understands is a model nobody opens twice.
A discussion about the commitment in front of you and what the model has to answer for it to be worth building. This frequently narrows the brief, which is a good outcome and usually a cheaper one.
We work from your existing accounting exports and management information. You will not be asked to build a finance pack before we can start, and where a figure is missing we agree an assumption and test its effect rather than waiting for perfect data.
We link the mechanics, pressure-test the assumptions and run the scenarios, then walk you through it and adjust. Most models improve materially here, because seeing one is what tells you what you actually wanted.
The finished model, the assumptions note, and a working session on a genuine question. We explain the mechanics, the findings and the limitations, so the model is used rather than filed.
Deliverables
Boundaries
Please note
A model is only as good as what goes into it. Where an assumption is genuinely unknown we say so and test how much the answer moves, rather than choosing a figure quietly. Where something needs your accountant or a tax adviser, we identify it plainly so it can be dealt with properly.
The fee
The fee
Scoped to your requirements, with a tailored quote.
Engagements of this kind vary too much for a published figure to mean anything. We agree the scope with you first and confirm the fee in writing before any work begins. There are no packages, no tiers and no day rates.
Arrange an initial discussionScope and fee are agreed in writing before any work begins, and neither changes once it has. What the fee reflects:
Afterwards
Most clients take the model and use it. It is built to be maintained by the business rather than to create a dependency, and the handover exists to make that realistic.
Where circumstances change materially, further iterations or advice on using the model can be scoped separately. Some businesses return when a new decision arrives. Many do not need to, which is the intended outcome.
Questions
There is no published price, because the work varies too much for one to be meaningful. A focused model answering a single hiring question is a very different engagement from a fully linked forecast with multiple scenarios. We establish what you need and provide a tailored quote, agreed in writing before anything begins.
No. We work from the exports your accounting system already produces and whatever management information you keep. Part of the reason owners commission this is that their information is not in good order, so asking you to fix that first would defeat the purpose.
A model reflects its assumptions, and we would rather say so plainly than imply a precision it cannot have. Its value is in showing how much the answer moves when the things you are unsure about change, which is more useful than a single confident number that turns out to be wrong.
If the decision needs one. Some questions require a fully linked three-statement forecast; many need only a cash view and a profit view. We agree what is genuinely required rather than building everything as a matter of course.
Aston Finch is an independent advisory firm, not an accountancy practice. The financial expertise behind this work comes from chartered accountancy experience, but the work itself is commercial modelling to support decisions rather than compliance.
No. Your accountant prepares, files and knows the history. This is a forward-looking tool for a decision, and the two sit alongside one another. We are glad to work with your accountant directly, and often the model is better for it.
A spreadsheet you can open, read and edit. We do not build models that depend on software you would have to keep paying for, or that only we can operate.
Accurate and useful are different properties. What decisions actually require from financial information, why statutory accounts cannot supply it, and where to start without new systems.
Turnover rises, effort rises, and the bottom line does not follow. Why growth arrives in the least profitable places, how overheads move in steps, and why price is the most neglected lever.
Growth does not create problems; it reveals the constraints already there. The structural characteristics that let a business absorb demand, and the order in which they are worth building.
A short conversation is usually enough to establish what would need to be modelled and what information it would take. We confirm the scope, the assumptions and the fee in writing before any work begins.